


Go With The Flow

by MadAndy



Category: Queens of the Stone Age
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 06:58:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7257133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadAndy/pseuds/MadAndy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The desert meets the forest, in England in the fall of the year....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go With The Flow

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Although this tale features characters that share an awful lot of characteristics with the individuals who go to make up the featured rock band, it isn't them. I'm fully aware of that fact; they're completely their own people, and this is a fantasy based on their stage personas, interviews and other material in the public domain. No malice or impeachment is intended to the band, their families, friends, management companies or anyone else involved with them in any way, shape or form. No money is being made from this tale, it's written purely for the enjoyment of the author...and her readers. 
> 
> It's fiction. Enjoy it as such.
> 
> Written in 2008

****

_Go With The Flow_

The trees were closer together.

Josh straightened up, frowned.

The trees were closer together, and the others were nowhere to be seen; there should be a crew, photographers, lights, band mates - but no. The trees had moved and the guys were gone and he wasn’t taking anything, not at the moment. Flashback, perhaps? All he’d done was look a little closer at a flash of movement several bushes away - a deer, perhaps, or a raccoon.

Wait. Were there raccoons in England?

He couldn’t remember.

He pushed his hand through his hair and frowned. This was crazy. And he didn’t like that he couldn’t see very far; couple of yards, perhaps, and then the darkness of mossy trunks blocked his vision. Where had he come from, anyway?

He turned his head, tried to see the path he’d been on. 

What the fuck? They’d been in a clearing, nearing the end of a long day’s posing for the cameras. There had been well-defined tracks, and he could even see where the cluster of four wheel drive vehicles had been parked in a series of muddy ruts to bring them to this quiet piece of Merrie England.

And now...just the trees.

Or maybe not. He heard a whisper, a chuckle in the gloom. Leaves rustled overhead in a quiet murmur of imagined menace, and when he spun to see what had caught his eye he saw a figure flash between two trees, an impossible shape that flitted away before he could quite dismiss what he was seeing.

He’d been on some trips, but this was crazy.

“Hey,” he said, then cleared his throat. Weird wasn’t the word. “Hey!”

_Hey, way, say,_ laughed the trees in the sough of wind. _You’re not in the desert now, little boy lost._

“This is nuts,” he muttered, and picked a direction. He had no idea what the trees and bushes were called, but damn it if they didn’t all have spikes and branches that poked, whippy little branches that slapped and mysterious green slime that rubbed off on his jacket as he struggled and stomped.

Give him the desert any day.

“And is my home so repulsive to you, traveller?” asked a deep voice from behind his shoulder.

Josh almost swallowed his tongue.

But when he spun to track the source there was - as he should have expected - nobody there. He yelled frustration, the harsh sound lost amongst the shafts of late-afternoon sunlight that sparse dappled the thick greenery of the forest undergrowth. The whole place smelled of leaf mould and wet and growing things and he was fed up, fucked off, and wanted to punch someone.

That voice rumbled again, amusement heavy in the tone. “Violence, traveller? Is the heat of your... desert... so hot in your blood, then?”

The word _desert_ had been heavy with derision, and dislike sizzled along the edges. Josh ground his teeth and shook hair out of his eyes, jerked head and shoulders this way and that to try and catch a glimpse of whoever it was that spoke so clearly from thin air. That he was lost was bad enough; that the mysterious stranger (and he mentally rolled his eyes at the cliché of the phrase) could play him so easily was making him rage.

“Follow,” it said once more, and this time when he stumbled round he could see what would almost qualify as a path. And as if to illuminate the point, underline it, forms flickered in and out of the trees to tempt him forward; he peered at them, tried to qualify them in his head.

_I’ve fallen into a fucking fairytale,_ he thought, eyes wide as a very naked nymph rubbed herself against a tree in a fashion that would have got his ass sued off if he’d ever tried to publish a picture like that. She stuck her tongue out at him and vanished into the green, only to be replaced by another dart of life that drew his eye on, and on--

Josh gave up, and followed.

~*~

Struggling through a particularly nasty patch of briars, it took Josh a few moments to turn and appreciate the place he’d been led to. He shook himself down, rubbed the bloodied scratches on the back of his hands, and reached into his pocket for his cigarettes.

“Very nice,” he muttered around the filter, then puffed blue smoke into the cooling air. “Very...English.”

“Such disdain from the self-styled King Of The Desert,” growled that voice again, and Josh looked over his shoulder.

And looked up.

He really hadn’t been expecting the owner of the voice to be there, but this time he was. And if he was expecting a reaction, well, Josh had seen far weirder things than an enormous half-man, half-goat figure when out of his skull on mescaline and tequila. Giant dayglo rattlesnakes with open sores for eyes that cried like babies and shook leprous breasts at him and he’d laughed, so not even the dangerous glitter in the deep amber eyes of this impossibility fazed him at all.

Of course, it was mildly unfair that it was taller than him but eh. Whatever.

“Fuck you,” he replied calmly, and turned back to carry on looking at the scene before him. Which was, he had to admit, rather pretty.

Before him stretched a pool, all lit up golden and green and silver in the last of the afternoon sunlight as a small spring gurgled into it from one side, with willows all draped around the edge. Mossy logs dipped into the shallows, and small things rustled in the reeds around the banks. Flowers scented the air and late dragonflies zipped around, snatched gossamer-winged fairies from the air and ate them, shrieks extinguished in a most disconcerting manner; something large went _plop_ further away, and Josh sighed smoke out of his nose.

“Is this a bad trip?” he asked, voice tight, “because I swear, I’m gonna kick someone’s ass for slipping me a Mickey.”

The other figure lounged against a tree, narrowed eyes full of smoke and low, smouldering heat.

“And what makes you think it is not real, man of sand?”

Josh flicked his cigarette end to the floor and cocked his head at the other ma-- thing.

“This. Not real. So now I know you’re a figment of my fucked up imagination you can fade away and I can get back to my life. Work to do, places to be. Fuck off.”

Hooves crunched on damp moss as the figure approached, circled. Josh stared at the pond, arms folded, and ignored it.

This time the voice appeared to be barely holding back the amusement, and the tone was not kind.

“I have met your kind,” it crooned, and the words wrapped around Josh’s brain like a serpent, “all full of your own importance and believing that the world should reorganise itself for your pleasure. You intruded upon my world with your harsh memories of dry heat, and the desiccation of the sand of your home. You gleam like bone, boy, and I saw you strut through _my_ woods.”

Girls with butterfly wings straddled monsters born from fever dreams in the gathering dusk, and Josh followed the patterns of horns and hooves in the coil of dark. Not everything was fucking; a deer wandered down through the fluttering scatter of motion and lowered its head to drink, lipping the water away from its muzzle and regarding Josh with dark, wise eyes before it turned and bounded away.

Small figures knee high popped up, stared, then vanished with a snicker. Lights festooned the trees, and what he could see of the sky stained purple with evening, and the air became drowsy with the approach of a heavy summer’s night.

OK, what? This morning it had been fall.

“Autumn,” corrected his companion. “It is my home and my place and you will _look_ at me when I address you.”

That voice had cracked like a whip, compelled him to turn and raise his eyes; the pleasure he saw there for his obedience pricked his pride, and he threw a punch before he could think about the possible consequences.

The figure rocked back, and raised a fine arch of eyebrow. The eyes glittered, and then it hit him back.

~*~

Consciousness returned like a bubble of gas come up from deep water, a silvery waver that came closer and closer before it broke over him in a wash of light of sound.

Everything still worked - good - and he struggled up on to his elbows to see where he was now.

Something stirred in his stomach, and he began to wonder - for the first time - if this was a trip after all. Or maybe it was real. Worlds within worlds, and he’d fallen right down the fucking rabbit hole. 

Still. At least it wasn’t raining.

Josh looped his arms around his knees and watched the scene that unfolded before him. Night had fallen while he’d been out, and the patch of sky above the pond blazed with stars that burned somehow a little less hard than they did at home; but then, he was seeing through a hole in the trees, not the edge-to-edge freedom of horizon he was used to.

The way so many of the imaginary creatures sported through the grassy surround to the pond made him think of a Disney movie, but - and he frowned, leaned forward to watch a hare and a tiny, elegant nymph - unless there was an x-rated copy of _Fantasia_ doing the rounds that he’d never seen, Disney couldn't _make_ movies like this. The whole thing was insane, and for a moment he craved the dry night air of his home. This heady, deep greenwood was all very well, but he was a creature of the open air.

“You wake,” rumbled a voice, and when he cocked his head to the side the creature that had hit him was sprawled elegantly on a pad of silvery animal skins, glass held lightly in one hand and one huge furred hindleg cocked to rest upon the other.

“I’m still here,” he grumbled, and hesitated to take the second glass that a green-skinned girl with yellow eyes held out to him.

“Take it,” said that voice, although now there was no compulsion in it, only amusement, “it will not harm you.”

Josh did so, and sipped gingerly. It tasted like nothing else he’d ever tried, and he rolled the flavour around his mouth for a moment, then swallowed the gentle burn down. He bared his teeth at the sky, sighed. Undoubtedly alcoholic.

“So who the fuck are you, anyway?” he asked, once the taste had faded to a tingle.

The creature let his head fall back, watched a comet streak across the purple-black of the sky. “Your ancestors knew me,” he said quietly, “knew and revered me. They knew this place, although they all had different names for it. You should know me, traveller.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe they headed west to get away from all this shit.”

He hadn’t expected the laugh, but it shivered along his spine in a fashion most pleasant.

“Perhaps!” The great head rolled, and Josh found himself staring into the dark amber of amusement. Long curly hair gleamed across the human shoulders, caressed the bulge of muscle under the smooth skin; small horns peeked through it, curled back over to throw back the chill of moonlight to mix with the warmer glow of the fire. The chest hair was thick and curly, defined the sweep of pecs and narrowed to a trail that led to the more bestial half below. “Perhaps,” it added more softly. “But you are deep in the soul of the Forest, and you sup with Pan of the Wild Woods. Does that answer your question, traveller?”

A slow nod, and he took another slug of his drink. He could get used to this stuff, whatever it was, and he ignored Pan for a while and watched the festivities that were becoming, if that were possible, even more debauched.

“My children at play,” rumbled Pan’s voice, a thread of dark silk in the night. Full lips curved into an indulgent smile, then the forest God returned his attention to his unwilling guest. 

“Looks like a cross between a porn show and a travelling circus,” he replied, watching the other from the corner of his eye. Pan frowned, then reached out one brawny arm to yank him close, his ass slithering across the silky hair of the skins the other creature reclined upon.

“A circus, you say? Well then, man of the dry sands, what say you put on a show for us?”

He could have fought. He could have struggled, could have tried to deny this huge - _thing_ \- what it so clearly wanted. But he was tired, a long way from home, and sex had always been his favourite way to relax. Plus, whatever had been in that fucking wine had gone straight to his head, and he could feel the pulse of the life from this dark, wet place beginning to throb in his veins and it warmed his soul from a place he never thought he had. From somewhere deep in his genetic makeup he recognised the place, and the explosion of life that demanded he join in.

Unfolding his legs he rose, held out the glass for a refill and tilted it at the yellow-eyed girl with a smile, then drank. He moved forward, to a clear grassy spot in front of Pan, and lifted his chin in arrogant invitation; from somewhere came a rhythm, small hands clapped, and others took up the beat.

His hips began - almost of their own volition - to sway, and he finished the glass of strange wine then tossed it aside. The beat became more insistent, laced with the sounds of hooves stamped against the moist ground, and he began to feel it throb in his chest. Well, it wasn’t the first time he’d done a striptease, but it was surely the strangest crowd he’d ever performed in front of--

Buttons popped and the shirt flew, shoes kicked off, and he writhed for his audience while their beat thrummed in his blood. Hands joined his on his body and he found himself surrounded by the vari-coloured bodies of nymphs and dryads, barky brown skin and smooth tremble of blue, green of moss and eyes that glowed in the dark. He whirled with them, stroked their bodies to make them call out in time - always in time - and felt the last of his clothes spin away into the dark.

Then they scattered to leave him hard and searching, and from the moonlit darkness came their God.

Pan’s eyes were filled with smoke and heat, and the rhythm slowed; he reached out large hands and stroked along Josh’s body, caressed his pale skin and pulled him close to feel his own desire reflected. 

They kissed, lips meeting tentatively at first. Neither gave anything away, the encounter one of equals; the dry scorch of the desert gave nothing to the cool green of the forest, but each explored what the other had to give to fulfill the silent cravings of its opposite. Short nails scratched through dense fur, and Pan’s dark skin shadowed the paleness of the redhead; blue eyes full of madness laughed into the amber as they rolled to the forest floor, the skins and pillows arranged around them to provide hedonistic comfort in the heart of the greenwood.

And all to the beat, the steady thrum of it pounding between and through them as Josh yelled out, twisted beneath Pan’s ministrations and his unbelievably long, agile tongue. They twined, their actions mirrored all across the clearing; the God took his pleasure, and what could his children do but honour him with their own couplings?

They rolled, their bodies so different but bound together by passion and heat; the sun and moon, dark of forest and bright gleam of desert sand drawing sounds of pleasure each from the other. Josh found himself lifted to his knees, laughed to be the one taken; the laugh turned to a groan with the pain as Pan found his way in, the strange cock forcing itself into his body on the slickness of saliva but still tender, for all that.

A great cry to punctuate the throb of the wild music, Pan’s head flung back, his gleam of blue-black curls shivering against the tight muscles of his back; his bestial haunches thrust and his tail thrashed, and beneath him the desert pushed back to take him deeper. They fucked beneath the canopy of trees and stars in the soul of the ancient greenwood, and the very air was alive around them.

~*~

“Josh! _Josh!_ ”

Sunlight. Sunlight? Yeah. Must be morning, then.

Muscles protested loudly as he pushed himself up, blinked at the chill morning sunshine.

And people yelling at him. Why were people always yelling at him? Fuckers.

He rummaged in his pocket for cigarettes and lighter, paused briefly to consider the fact that he was clothed; last thing he recalled he’d been very naked, fucked by the spirit of the forest and covered in sweat and strange-smelling semen. He and Pan had fucked, then various other beings had joined in and the whole thing had got a bit indiscriminate; he was sure he’d be seeing some of those bodies in his dreams, and not a few in his nightmares.

Still, clothes or not his ass was sore, his jaw ached, and he knew that he stank.

“Over here,” he croaked, and had to grin when Troy’s head popped round the side of a bush, hair so normally smoothed and immaculate sticking up at all angles with leaves in it. _Pan would have liked Troy,_ he thought to himself.

“Where the _fuck_ have you been?” the other man said, picking his way through the mud and leafmould to fold his arms and glower down at his friend. “We’ve had search parties out and everything! Up all night trying to find you, asshole.”

Josh shrugged one shoulder, smoked his cigarette. He greeted Joey with a small flick of his hand, spared little more than a nod for the rest of the search team that trailed in after him; he mumbled and shrugged his way through the aftermath, the questions evaded and the explanations as vague as he could make them. It was some time later, comfortably ensconced back at the hotel and cleaned up, that Troy caught him alone.

“What happened?” he asked softly, and Josh shrugged once again.

“The desert met the forest,” he said with a nod, never taking his gaze from the vista of trees he could see through the window. Out there, somewhere....

“And what happened?” repeated his friend patiently. Josh turned to him, shot a wolfish grin.

“Music,” he said.

_~Fin~_


End file.
